Monday, 18 September 2017

Happy Memories

I've been uploading the entire family photo collection to Google Photos.

It does not cost anything and they are secured in all their glory.

SO A BIG THANK YOU TO GOOGLE

If only Google folks bought some books too then I'd be even happier

As I write and post and then backoff as a book when I have 100 or so stories

I am NOT getting the sales I'd like.

1,166,931 undiscovered words if you like

I'd like to earn a few quid before I die, assuming North Korea does not kill us all,

 and have that bigger house we need.

Otherwise if Google can predict the lottery numbers for me

That's all for today

below is where I'd live IF I won the lottery, though as ever I'd be more
than happy just for my arthritis to go away.

Just had a thought could sonics be used to take away pain, I'm  no scientist but if sound can induce pain surely on a different frequency it could take away pain.

Michael




List of my books, written by me, Michael Casey
The fat silver haired writer in shades.

1.The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker
2.Shoplife
3.Essays and Plays
4.Blogs 2011
5.300 and Not OUT
6.Shorts 2013
7.More Shorts 2014
8.Quick Stories
9.Still Alive 2015
10.Undiscovered Words 2016
11.Still Smiling 2017
12.Altogether Now
13.New Horizons
14.14 Up

fill a kindle with my 1st 1,000,000 words thank you

Angel and Me



https://www.amazon.co.uk/Michael-Casey/e/B00571G0YC/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0


Sunday, 17 September 2017

Fridge Family Casey a 6 year old story, our new fridge just went pop after 6 years



 Fridge Family Casey ©


  By

 Michael Casey


Our fridge died on us. My wife had been nagging for ages about our fridge, finally I gave in. I agreed we needed a new fridge, and we could afford it.

So I started looking on the Internet to see where are the bargains were. Argos, Currys, Comet, John Lewis, these were the target sites, not to mention loads of others the google search gave us. But with something like a fridge, or rather a Frost Free Fridge Freezer, you really have to go to the shops and look at the offers.

So Sunday was Family Fridge Day. It began with my wife and girls going to their church, with a promise of a visit to Costco afterwards. I hadn’t decided which of my 3 churches to go to, it all depends on how tired or lazy I am, that’s why I’m here there and everywhere, so I have 3 priests praying for me. My wife and the girls go to the C of E while I stick with the Catholics. I forced myself to go to my local church around the corner, this is where our Topol look alike priest sings to us. Don’t take my word, go and attend.

My wife was surprised when she returned that I’d been out to Mass, and why had she returned instead of directly going to Costco, the simple reason, what did I have in my pocket? My wallet. So off the family went to Costco.

I like Costco because you can have a beef hotdog and a soda, with soda refill for only £1.50, yes really. While we were there we spotted a fridge freezer, so we had a look, trying all the doors and so on. There was one problem, we have a galley kitchen so we had to think, would the door open fully, if it couldn’t then we
couldn‘t buy it. We bought our stuff from Costco and I enjoyed the hotdog.

Next we were off to Wing Wip, he’s a major Chinese food hypermarket, several of my wife’s friends work there, Mr Ying Yip himself, one of the brothers waved us bye bye as we left the store. I’m told “byebye” is originally a Chinese word.

Afterwards we went to Sainsbury’s in Selly Oak, which is a student area, next to Birmingham University. There my wife met more or her friends who happened to be shopping.
So the next port of call was over the dangerous road behind Sainsbury’s that’s where Comet and Currys and Homebase are.

We looked up and down the aisles we had a good play with the fridges. Ma, my mother-in-law in Shanghai had admonished us to get a big fridge because the kids were growing and would want more food very soon. There was a nice big Indesit a silver colour, immediately we agreed on that. But we still needed to look in the shop next door. So that’s what we did, in the next shop my wife eyed a very big Bosch which blew the budget out of the water. So we looked at it and pulled and pushed all the drawers and doors open and closed. Then we went to Homebase but they don’t have fridges in the shop, only online.

The final problem was the lack of space in our galley kitchen, really we needed a tape measure to measure from the back of the fridge to the door wide open position. So we thought we’d come back the next day with our measurements and compare to what was in the shop. These are the things the Shanghai Family Casey have to do out of love and madness. I suppose we are like the Adams Family when we hit the shops.

Safely back home we decided to take our measurements down, once we had these we were half way home. But I don’t know about you but wouldn’t it be  easier to just do it online? So armed with the 55cm measurement we went searching online. Hey presto we found an Indesit Frost Free Fridge Freezer that matched our 55cm figure. To be honest it was the very same fridge I had suggested a couple of days before, only I’d been overruled, which meant the Adams Family had to go playing hide and seek while we looked for a fridge.

Family meeting was held and our two girls looked at the Dixon’s offer. Yes that was the one. I hit return and bought the fridge freezer, frost free too. That was Sunday, though it felt not like a Sunday more like a Bank Holiday, a family day out while we looked at fridges.

Today Tuesday, the day after tomorrow, the lads rung us up early and said they’d be with us in 10 minutes. Then hey presto they appeared with the new frost free fridge freezer, our Indesit. They stripped all the packaging away in the street and they carried in the  new fridge,
 a bit like undertakers, but carrying in instead of out. They did carry away our old fridge, and in a matter of 10 mins we had a new addition to the family.

Our girls could not wait to try out the new super freezer, so after 4 hours, which is the wait time before you can switch on a new freezer, I was told this, I didn’t know this. So once it was ready me and the girls made up some blackcurrant squash and poured it into the 24 ice cube slots. They were impatient to see the results of their experiment, several times they opened and closed the fast freezer box. Finally all was revealed, we had cracked it, we had flavoured ice cubes!

The girls say they have lots to grow now, as they measure their height against the fridge. Doesn’t everybody’s kids, or is it in this Shanghai Casey’s family only? The new fridge is 1.74 metres, or up to my eyebrows so IF the girls grow that tall then they will be Models, they are pretty enough already, the wife could have been a model too, only she wasn’t tall enough, and turned down a chance to be a model for childs’ clothes in Shanghai.
How she married me is another story, I think it was my ability to choose fridges that swung it for me.

 ********

Our Indesit fridge just died after 6 years.

first the light went out and after we unplugged and were testing the fuse etc we heard a pop, maybe from an internal fuse.

so we'll buy a new indesit in the morning, it'd cost more than its worth to fix it.

 ******


just checked for 219 can get a new indesit, so I think that's what we will do.

Indesit CAA55 50/50 Fridge Freezer - White



 

A Slice of Life, a Piece of Cake

A Slice of Life, a Piece of Cake ©
By
Michael Casey

Elaine Polin the NY poet once said to me that what I wrote was a slice of life. Though it’s many years since I darkened her door, we did have some fun when I was on FB, but I’m NOT on FB or anywhere anymore, but a big Hello to her, she’s probably forgotten me by now.

So what do I write? I write short stories, I was even told be a female priest decades ago that she thought it would be my specialty, makes me sound like a fat cook in a greasy spoon cafe. Heart attack on a plate, with ketchup.

I am a vacuum cleaner, or totally vacuous if you are unkind, perhaps I should just change my bag inside, a bit like Kate Bush’s kick inside? Who knows? Do I have total recall, I cannot remember what I have forgot, though there are some things I wish I could and cannot. Memories are things we have to live with, the bad ones, the sad ones can scar us forever, as we all know. My earliest is 53 years old when I was left alone in front of the fire while dad collected mum from the hospital and my new baby sister. I can remember my dad telling me to leave the fire alone.

On other occasions I can remember film like what went on. The proudest moment was when we went on a family Pilgrimage to Lourdes by train. The train stopped and money and tiny bottles of pop were exchanged via the windows. It was very expensive,so expensive that dad handed them back, all 8 bottles. Only he handed back 7. The seller came on the train demanding his final bottle,  unholy uproar ensued.

The entire train swore and cursed and gave two fingers to the hawker. We were 6 kids aged 16 to 3 plus mum and dad. So Holy Uproar as we pulled out the station. Shouts of England will win the World Cup, t was 1966 after all. Other Pilgrims came to our aid with water, cursing the Bloody French. An hour later mum moved her position and plumped up her cushion, only to reveal the missing 8th very expensive pop bottle,it was orange. It was drunk and the bottle thrown out the moving train window. The Bloody French. Two years later my big brother was studying French at Queen’s Oxford. My smaller other brother went on to Downing Cambridge in 1975, to study Economics, maybe the Laws of Supply and Demand.

So there you have it a story from 51 years ago. I can remember racing against the life as I bounced off the walls of the stairwell. My small sister aged 3 refused to take her anorak off even though the temperature soared, this was for the entire week. She later 20 years later, went to France on her year abroad and was able to pick up all the slang going. She even memorized Some Day My Prince Will Come from Snow White. The other teachers were teasing her, what had she done over the weekend in the very small village. So she turned around and sang it to them, the staff room were very impressed and collapsed into laughter. Now 30 years later she is still friends with the English teacher.

So I think La Belle France has forgiven us for the forgotten pop bottle, one brother did study there for a year, and then work in Paris for a year, bilingual was the word. I had my own misadventures in Paris, if I can find the file I’ll add it to my website. Let’s just say 1998 was a very funny year for me.

Which brings us back to the vacuum cleaner. I love stories, dad used to tell us stories over and over again, even if the repertoire was limited, I just hearing them and magnified the love between us as far as I was concerned. So I visited him every single day for 3 years after his heart attack, I did it out of Love, and my siblings loved and visited very often too. I can remember my last ever visit to him on the Tuesday, then 4 days later he asked for another breakfast egg and was dead when the egg arrived.

Our Life, our Love is what makes us, it’s the glue of Family, of any family. That story, this event, makes us laugh, makes us cry with laughter, or just makes us cry. If we cannot cry then have we forgotten the love. I never cried the day mum died, all my siblings did, but mum had said don’t cry so I obeyed her. I can remember all the days events as we gathered around the family home and our broken dad. I can remember my brother digging the flowerbeds, mum’s delights. I can remember sitting behind Mrs M in Sunday Mass as the Canon announced mum’s death, Mrs M was so shocked, she is still alive, now in her 90s.

Memories are there to save us, to help us and to treasure in dark times. That’s why I record everything in my mind and share my stories on the page. And that is why I detest things that destroy the mind, the imagination or the spirit. Lift somebody up don’t knock them down. That night playing on the radio was Celine Dion’s You Lift Me Up, as my family sat up all night they heard that song.

That’s what mum did all her hard working family life, she lifted us all  up. Mum had all the graces dad said, she was as strong as a horse too, which is high praise from a blacksmith, her husband, my dad. So if you wonder where does all my spirit come from though now my body is much weaker, then the answer is from my parents, from mum and dad. For they were Kerry people, its in the breed as dad used to say of things. And Kerry breeds for Love and Happiness and Stories, for though I may be in Birmingham, County Kerry is in me.



Portuguese Translations

Humour Writing by the fat silver haired writer in shades from Birmingham England read in 167 countries so far https://www.amazon.co.uk/Micha...